Under Ground, page 8
Milo closed his eyes and drifted back into a fitful sleep. Leo looked doubtfully at his wife. “Good as new, ay?”
“In a land with no laws, faith is more important than anything.”
CHAPTER 13
It took weeks to recover. Milo lost his job at the Belgrade mine. He lost his spot at the boardinghouse, not that he wanted it back. Ana Zalar, with Danko in tow, returned to Torelli’s to retrieve Milo’s possessions. A sporting girl directed her, with a bored gesture, upstairs to where Milo had slept. His bed was occupied by one of several snoring miners who were gearing up for the night shift. Milo’s rucksack was lying empty in the corner. The other boarders had taken his canteen, his overalls, his candles, his knife. His guitar, however, was still there. Ana grabbed it and walked out of the tavern.
Moose Jackson had broken four of Milo’s ribs in the one-sided bar fight. After two weeks, Milo could see out of both eyes, but he still had trouble breathing. He loathed the idea of going back to work underground. Nonetheless, he applied for and immediately got hired at the St. James mine a few miles away.
As he recovered, Milo read in The Industrial Worker that the United States would soon enter the mighty war raging in Europe. Never before had there been a greater need for the iron produced on the Mesabi Range, and never before had there been so few workers to dig it out of the ground. The government had enacted immigration quotas, which stopped the flow of unskilled workers to northern Minnesota. An injured man was preferable to no worker at all. The foreman who hired Milo even offered him an advance on his first month’s wages to pay for his work clothes, candles, and matches. Two days later, he got word from Mr. Anton Kovich that there was an opening at his boardinghouse. It was outside of town and had a reputation for being peaceful.
But not long after his arrival, things would change. A girl would arrive from the old country. A skinny girl with big, dark eyes like a deer. Within months, trouble would barge through the door of the Slovenski Dom. Once again, Milo would not be able to walk away.
CHAPTER 14
“When you going to repair the smokehouse roof?” Lily said to Anton one morning after the miners had left for work. “You promised that patchwork would be temporary. It looks low class.”
“Lily, my precious flower, we got a nice house here. Bet Katka didn’t even notice the patch on the roof, did you, niece?”
“What happened? A storm?”
“A right good one. Tree fell on it,” Anton said. “It happened before your arrival. But Lily’s right. I’ll get a man to help me, and we’ll make it right as rain.”
“He will not,” Lily said to Katka. “He always says he is going to do something, and then he runs off to the woods and hibernates.”
“Do I?” Anton asked. He walked toward his wife, grabbed her hand tenderly, and pulled her toward him. He put his hands on her cheeks and kissed her. “Why don’t you hibernate with me, you old nag?”
Katka liked to see her aunt and uncle so happy. Even when they argued, there was always an element of play in it. It made the long days shorter. She was exhausted. She and Lily rose at 4:30 a.m., prepared breakfast, and sent the miners off to work with a hot lunch. While they were cleaning up, Anton left for the woods to hunt or oversee the men who logged his land. When the women could no longer hear the hooves of his horse, they would grab a few hard-boiled eggs and a carafe of coffee and head to the cellar, where Katka continued to give Lily typing lessons. Lily was impatient and her work full of errors.
“You type,” she said to Katka. “I’ll dictate.” They switched places and Katka’s fingers moved like a musician’s across a piano:
Chest Cold Remedy Cures What Ails You
1. Gather a few armfuls of evergreen branches.
2. Throw away all but the tips, which should be light green in color.
3. Place the tips with half pound of sugar in a glass jar and cover (tight).
4. Place the jar in sunlight for two or three weeks, until syrup forms.
5. Serve a spoonful at a time to your man and children.
In the three weeks since Katka’s arrival, spring had gone and summer arrived. Apple trees bloomed and tulips blossomed and died. Wild lupine, which grew on both sides of Blood Red Road, exploded across the landscape in cheerful hues of purple and pink. The women picked the flowers and put them in vases throughout the house, even in the cellar where they worked on the women’s paper. They had completed six articles and some sketches of women’s swimwear that was now on sale at Cerkvenik’s. Lily wrote about the ceremony for the first four graduates of Biwabik High School and what the mayor’s wife was wearing. Lily also wrote a detailed article about the ten catalogue girls who had arrived from Finland a week earlier. Although she interviewed none of them, she included personal information on each bride. Most of this information came from her bosom buddy, Helen, who worked behind the counter at Cerkvenik’s and lived for gossip. Nowhere in the pamphlet was there any reference to anything remotely controversial.
They christened their publication The Iron Range Ladies Journal. Lily tied a ribbon around the typed stack of articles and drawings, and put the manuscript in a small brown egg crate with a handwritten letter on top. She carried it to the chicken coop, put it next to the other crates, and covered the top with hay. The next morning when Katka went to gather eggs, the manuscript was gone, picked up by Lily’s conspirator, who would typeset it and run off copies.
The following Saturday was hot and humid. Lily got word from Helen that the Ladies Journal had been delivered to both Cerkvenik’s and Gornik’s General Store and was selling like hotcakes. Lily and Katka decided to celebrate by doing nothing. “Besides,” Lily said, “it’s too damn hot to cook.”
As evening approached, Katka and Lily laid out bread, meat, and cheese on the dining room table and let the men make their own sandwiches to eat at their leisure.
“It’s fend-for-yourself night,” Lily proclaimed to all the boarders. “We ladies need a rest.”
Katka and Lily set up chairs in the backyard. “Anton always jokes about the weather here,” Lily said to Katka. “He calls Minnesota the land with nine months of winter and three months of bad sledding. But wouldn’t you know it? Because I’m carrying five pounds of warm coal on my ribcage, the Farmer’s Almanac predicts it will stay hot until fall.” Lily propped her swollen feet on a milk crate and rested a pint of cool ale on her protruding belly. “My feet hurt like a son of a bitch,” she said to Katka.
Uncle Anton was in the Slovenski Dom. Some of the boarders were inside, but most chose to eat their dinner outside in the breeze. Soon after, several of the miners began playing horseshoes. Every now and then, a few miners would look their way and call out a greeting.
“Starved, you know,” Lily said. “That’s what they are.”
“How could they be?” Katka asked. “All we do is feed them.”
“Not that kind of starvation, you ninny. They’re hungry for women. There aren’t many single ones left, and this war in Europe is putting a stop to the catalogue brides. Don’t you see the way they look at you?”
“At me?”
“Even Old Joe, who could be your grandfather.” Katka and Lily glanced over at Joe, who nearly lost his balance while trying to swat a mosquito without spilling his beer. “Well, maybe not Old Joe.” The women laughed loudly. When they did, the horseshoe players all looked their way. Milo Blatnik tipped his cap at them.
“You ladies want to throw?” Old Joe, his back hunched over from Crooks disease, yelled, gesturing toward the stake with a horseshoe. “Got to be better than Baby Milo here. He’s a cebula glava, he is. Onionhead. I think you could take him, Teta Lily. Yes, I do!”
“’Course I could, Joe. Could take you too, probably faster. But if you haven’t noticed, I’m in a bit of a predicament here,” Lily said, pointing to her belly. “Trying to take advantage of my handicap?”
Milo walked toward the women. He was eighteen now, just turned. Although he was the newest boarder at the house, having arrived only a short time before Katka, he was well-liked and had made friends. He had grown four inches in the last year and was nearly six feet tall, a decided disadvantage for an underground miner. When he was standing in front of Lily, he stopped.
“Cigarette?” he asked.
“We don’t,” Lily said, amused.
Milo slowly took a prerolled cigarette out of his pocket and lit it. He took a puff, blew the smoke toward the sky, then looked at the ground.
“Something on your mind?” Lily asked.
“Yes,” Milo said. “Miss Katka. I come to ask if you want to throw the shoe with me. This would be a great honor for me, and I think, more fun for you than sitting here. How about?”
Katka looked at her aunt with raised eyebrow. Her face communicated the unspoken question: What is the proper thing to do here?
Lily shrugged. “I’d play if I could.”
As Katka got up, took Milo’s arm, and walked to the horseshoe pit, the miners clapped and yelled. “Onionhead got a girl,” Old Joe bellowed.
The next morning Katka woke up tired. After two games of horseshoes, Milo, a kindly boarder named Dusca, and Old Joe somehow talked her into staying up late. They taught her to play Smear, and they took great pains to explain the game in terms a woman could understand. They didn’t know that Paul had taught her to play on the ship. They also didn’t know that he had told her to play dumb so she could hustle other players for fruit. She was shrewd. By the end of the second round, she was already keeping track of cards in her head, counting silently as cards from each suit were laid.
Milo was her partner. “Do you know what’s out?” he asked her.
“Perhaps no,” she said. “Perhaps yes.” She laid the jack of diamonds and took the last trick.
“You should play for money,” Old Joe said. “Reckon you’d make a hell of a lot more on cards than I make in the mine, that’s for God sure, it is.”
“We’ll see,” Katka said. “But before I make a fortune swindling miners out of their wages, I have to make you breakfast. In about six hours. Thank you for the lesson.”
The men stood and tipped their hats to Katka.
“She looking real pretty,” Dusca said when she left. “I think she wants to marry me.” Old Joe punched Dusca playfully on the shoulder. “Ow! What you do that for, dumbass?”
“Ain’t nobody going to marry you, knucklehead.”
“Maybe she’ll marry me,” Milo said.
“You too skinny. And stupid. Deal the cards, Onionhead. We’ll play three-man.”
CHAPTER 15
As Katka put on her shawl to go out to the barn to gather the eggs for Sunday’s breakfast, she was wishing she had said no to cards and turned in early instead. Her head ached slightly, and she knew it was from drinking beer. The ale was different here. She moved sluggishly. As she approached the door, she was startled to see Lily coming out of the barn, holding what looked to be an empty canvas coffee bag in her hand. She was smiling.
“What are doing here?” Katka asked. “To gather eggs is my job.”
“I was gathering something else. But I can’t tell you what it is until tomorrow after everyone leaves.” Lily kissed Katka on the cheek. “It’s so fun to have a secret!” she raved. “And perhaps you have a secret too? Anton tells me you were up late gambling with that rabble-rouser Milo.”
“Rabble-rouser?”
“A man who makes trouble,” Lily said. When Katka still didn’t understand, she translated. Katka crinkled her forehead. “Milo, I don’t think, is rouser of rabble.” She thought about Paul Schmidt. Her Paul was a rouser of rabble. She knew this all along, perhaps. Maybe even from the day he and his curly locks had arrived at her cottage in Zirovnica. All those secrets on the ship. His hesitancy to be seen or photographed. His detainment. Neither Anton nor Lily spoke of him openly or often. Lily had told her not to worry about him and also not to worry “for him.” According to Lily, Paul wasn’t a man who would make a reliable mate, as he had bigger doings afoot. “Forget about him,” Lily had said. Katka stopped asking questions and turned to the next best thing: eavesdropping. One night she overheard Anton telling Old Joe that no one could endure prison as easily as Paul. When Katka asked him what he meant, Anton told her he was talking about someone else. But she knew he wasn’t.
“Milo has a passion for you, I just know it,” Lily said. “And you have a passion for him, too, no?” Lily made kissing noises as she tucked the canvas bag into her apron pocket. Then she stuck her tongue out at Katka, held the underside of her belly with both hands, and practically skipped back to the kitchen. She was the happiest pregnant woman Katka had ever seen.
On Monday morning, after Anton and the miners left, the two women crawled into the cellar. Lily took out a match and lit the lantern. The light cast its familiar soft red hue over the guns, the writing material, the covered crates, even their faces. Katka smiled when she looked at her aunt. Her strawberry hair looked alive, like the sky had on her passage over, just before the big storm.
They sat at the table, and Lily produced the canvas bag, which she promptly flipped over. Coins spilled out.
“Two dollars and twenty cents!” Lily said triumphantly. “Sold out in one day, can you believe it? My deliveryman left the printer a note with our earnings. It read, ‘Next month print double, and we’ll both be rich.’” She lifted her coffee cup in a toast. “To us!”
“To us!” Katka said, smiling.
“Oh my...” Lily said, suddenly gripping her stomach.
“What is it, Teta?”
Lily stood up slowly, holding her back with her right hand and her belly with her left. She winced in pain.
“Is it the baby?” Katka whispered, knowing full well that it was too early. “You stay here. I’ll find help.”
“No. I have to get out of this cellar.” She was gasping now. “Help me.” She pointed toward the wooden ladder resting securely on the hooks that led to the main floor.
“Teta, I don’t think you should be climbing the ladder.”
“Help me up. Do as I say, please.” Katka yanked on the rope to unroll the rug above and climbed the ladder to release the floorboard. Then she turned back for Lily, who promptly vomited on the cellar floor. “Oh, no...”
Katka guided Lily toward the ladder and told her to put both hands on it. It was not a long way to go, perhaps six feet, but it felt like a mountain. She wrapped her own body around Lily’s, and they spooned their way up to the first floor. Katka pretended not to notice the small spot of blood on the floor as she led her aunt to the upstairs bedroom she shared with her uncle. She whimpered with every step. Finally, in the bed, Lily lay down and started to cry.
“Go to the butcher’s shop, down at the east edge of town,” Lily said. “Tell Mr. Sherek I need his wife. Tell her to hurry. Then come back here quick as you can.”
Katka ran as fast as her legs could take her. She had never been to the butcher shop. Anton always prepared his meats himself. As she ran toward town, she encountered a man standing next to his horse, who was watering at the stream. “Sir,” she said in English, “you know Mrs. Sherek?”
“Baby coming?”
Katka nodded.
The man took her to the Sherek residence. Mrs. Adeline Sherek, a woman in her late forties, spoke to Katka briefly, then grabbed a bag.
“Has she lost much blood?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
“We’ll take the buggy. I’ll tell my husband to locate Anton. Hunting in the woods, I suppose?”
“Said he’d be in the back forty today.”
Mrs. Sherek disappeared for a second to find her husband, then the two women rode quickly to the boardinghouse. They found Lily right where Katka had left her, except she was no longer moaning. She was lying in a pool of blood. Her eyes were closed, and she was not moving.
CHAPTER 16
Later, Katka told Lily the baby had been born dead, but that was a lie.
While the doctor worked on Lily, Adeline Sherek, the midwife, quickly handed the silent, blood-soaked child to Katka, who washed it and swaddled it in white linen. Katka was certain she saw the chest of the tiny infant rise and fall while in her arms. She saw the baby’s miniature mouth pucker up, as if ready cry out. Then she watched the tiny blue lips go slack. Dead.
Sedated with ether, Lily slept until the next day. When she awoke early in the morning, the doctor was gone. Mrs. Sherek was gone. Katka was serving breakfast at the big table. She left, momentarily, to deliver tea to Lily.
Anton was at Lily’s bedside. “Hey,” he said softly to his wife. “You had everyone worried. But not me. I told ’em all, my Lily—she a feisty one.” He told her what Dr. Payne had said. “Up and about in a couple of days. Almost bled to death, you did, but he said womenfolk recover from these things real good. Back to normal by the end of the week. That’s what you’ll be, I tell you.”
“Anton?”
“Yes, my precious flower?”
“Where is our baby?”
Katka quietly slipped out of the room and returned to the big table to continue serving the men.
They all heard Lily’s scream. It was a monstrous, guttural wail, more intimate than a whisper, more powerful than a dynamite blast. Katka dropped the plate of bacon she was distributing. It broke, and she clumsily picked it up, stuffing shards of porcelain and strips of pork fat into her apron pockets. All the miners put their utensils down. They waited until the screaming broke.
“Let us bow our heads and pray to the Virgin to take care of that baby,” Old Joe said. “Just this once, let that baby girl into heaven, even without the baptism.”
“What kind of God don’t let a baby into heaven?” Milo asked quietly. He was seated opposite Old Joe. “That little thing ain’t done no wrongs in the world. No wrongs! A God that cruel ain’t worth praying to.”
“Milo,” Old Joe said, his face reddening with anger. “I suggest you take that back.”
